He glared at the approaching ground with defiance.
And Gilgesh Khan, ruler of no empire save his approaching death, opened his arms wide to meet it as that other Khan would have.
Chapter 15
The hotel desk clerk cowered beneath Shatz Abel’s towering, rage-filled form.
“He what?” The pirate bellowed, as the frightened clerk tried to meekly wave something up at him from where he crouched behind his desk.
“C-c-captain Weems said to give this to you, sir,” the clerk said, thrusting a data card up at Shatz Abel; the pirate’s rage was only intensified when he saw that the hotel bill was attached to the card.
“That worm!” Shatz Abel fumed, but the clerk had already skittered away on all fours, as Dalin Shar tried to pull the pirate away from the desk and calm him down.
“Don’t you realize we’re surrounded by Wrath-Pei’s men?” Dalin whispered fiercely in the freebooter’s ear; already, two of the black-leather-clad figures, clustered at the small bar across the lobby, had glanced their way, and Dalin was certain they would be recognized if Shatz Abel’s antics continued. It was hard enough for Dalin to keep his hood over his eyes. “At least let’s see what Weems has to say,” Dalin continued, pulling the pirate away from the desk and toward the nearest lift tube.
The pirate followed, and in a moment they had risen to their floor and were safely inside their room. The view, as was that of every room in the resort, was of the sheer beauty of Carlton Cliff. Even from this distance Dalin could see that there was some commotion at the top of the precipice—and, nearly dwarfing the attraction, was the magnificent, mammoth wedge of Wrath-Pei’s ship, which hung over the cliff like a looming predator.
Shatz Abel was cursing, fumbling with the data card, which would not go into the Screen under his direction.
Dalin gently took the card and slipped it into the Screen’s slot, then stepped back to watch.
A harried-looking Captain Weems came into the picture; he had obviously made the recording in one of the lobby’s private booths; the trouble was that the booth was not all that private, and occasionally a figure passed close behind the captain, causing him to flinch and lurch into a sudden whisper. Flanking him was one of his robot navigators.
“Can’t talk long, lads,” the captain said, leaning closer to the recording Screen’s lens, as if in confidence. “Got to haul m’self out o’ here, if you catch my drift! Wish I could help ye further, but I’ve gotten wind at the tavern tha’ things are gonna get mighty hot around here, and very soon!”
A figure passed close behind the captain, who was startled to the point that he nearly lost his voice.
Leaning even closer to the Screen, he whispered, “Truth is, they’ve already been checking all th’ ships out o’ Tombaugh Port, and if I try to get you lads off Europa they’ll get you f’sure. So I’m headin’ out now, and wishin’ ye all the luck in th’ world.”
He turned as if finished, but then pushed his face back at the Screen. He said, hopefully, “Oh, and I imagine this squares it b’tween us, Shatz?”
“Squares it?” Shatz Abel raged. “If you were here, Weems, I’d square your head with my fists!” He made a threatening motion at the Screen, which showed the captain reaching for the data card while cursing at his robot navigator. Then the message ended.
“That’s it, lad,” Shatz Abel said. “There isn’t another ship out of this ice rock except the shuttle back to Titan. And Titan’s the last place we want to be at the moment.” Noting Dalin’s expression, Shatz Abel’s demeanor softened. “I know how you feel about that gal, but there’s just no way to do her any good by going to Titan at the moment. We’ve got to get you back to Earth. Titan and Mars are going to go at it soon, and when they do, we’ll have our chance to get Earth back in the good fight.”
When Dalin said nothing, the pirate said kindly, “We’ve been over it a hundred times, boy. There’s just no other way.”
“I know that,” Dalin said. “I know what has to be done. It’s just that every time I think of her suffering on Titan…”
The pirate put a meaty arm around the king’s Shoulder. “You’ll get your chance, Sire. I promise you that…”
The freebooter’s voice had trailed off, and Dalin saw that the man’s eyes were locked on Wrath-Pei’s ship, hovering like a black specter above Canton Cliff.
A smile had begun to spread over Shatz Abel’s face, and Dalin suddenly realized what was going through the pirate’s mind.
“You’re not thinking …” Dalin said in alarm.
“Not thinking at all, boy. Planning.”
“I’ve been on that ship, and I don’t want to be on it again,” Dalin said, but the pirate was already laughing, and in another twenty minutes had the two of them heading back down to the lobby in the lift tube, on their way to the bar.
They had their first drink alone, shadowed at a corner table, while Shatz Abel checked the possibilities.
There seemed to be plenty of what the pirate required: drunken men from Wrath-Pei’s ship. Like any buccaneers hitting port, they were making the most of their time on leave, and in no time at all Shatz Abel had located two who would suit their purposes perfectly.
Three rounds of drinks later (the last bought by the black-clad soldiers), Shatz Abel and Dalin were trading war stories with the two men, after drawing them off into the same shadowed corner; it was as if they had known one another forever.
“So then the Old Man says, ‘Time for a trim,’ and off they go!” the smaller of the two said, roaring with laughter; to emphasize his point, he hoisted his right leg up onto the table, showing them all a view of his black leather boot, shortened to accommodate his lack of toes.
“Awww, that ain’t nothing!” his companion growled amiably, displaying his two arms, artificial from the elbows down. “Did this in a fit of pique, he did,” the man laughed. “Hell—all I did was turn the wrong valve and mix a little sewage with the ship’s wash water!”
His friend rocked with laughter. “Hate to think what he’d do if you ever crossed him again!”
“Prob’ly cut my head off!” the second soldier howled, slapping his artificial hands together with a metallic sound.
“Snip, snip!” his friend mimicked, making his fingers into a mock scissors.
Shatz Abel laughed as loud as the two soldiers and pushed another round of drinks into their hands. Dalin continued to laugh but stayed out of the light.
“So what is it you boys do on Wrath-Pei’s ship?” Shatz Abel queried in a friendly tone.
“We’re waste men,” the taller soldier said proudly.
“Yeah, without us—and we’re our whole department—nothing’d keep moving on that boat. We manage all the waste and sewage. You might say—”
“Yeah,” his friend said, completing what was obviously an old joke between them, “You might say that without us, things’d get backed up!”
The two of them burst into gales of laughter, which Dalin and Shatz Abel joined.
“And where are you heading next?” Shatz Abel asked innocently, a friendly arm around each of the drunk soldiers.
“Ganymede!” the shorter one said in disgust. “There’s nothing there but a shuttle post, and some Martian freighters the Old Man wants—not even a tavern!”
The other one said, “Yeah, and we’d best be drinking as much as we can now; when the shooting starts, we won’t have another shot at it till Prime Cornelian is licking the Old Man’s boots.”
“Won’t that be something to see—the Old Man and Cornelian! He’ll have to sharpen those blades if he wants to take a cut or two out of the Bug, let me tell you!”
They all laughed, and the short soldier made his fingers into scissors once more.
“Snip! Snip!”
“Say …” Shatz Abel said, as if he had just been struck with a wonderful idea. “Have you two ever seen some of Wrath-Pei’s best work?”
“What do you mean?” the short soldier said.
His
friend shivered. “I hope you don’t mean that little crawly fellow the Old Man keeps around.”
“Lawrence.” The first soldier shivered also, and drained his glass.
“No, I mean the best,” Shatz Abel whispered. Then he pointed to Dalin, who leaned forward partially into the light to reveal his lidless eyes.
“Don’t look so special to me,” the short soldier said; he examined his empty glass.
“Oh,” Shatz Abel promised, “what you see is only part of what makes this boy special. And I’ve got a bottle of something special up in our room, too.”
“A bottle?” the short soldier asked.
Shatz Abel grinned. “And not the cheap rotgut they serve in here, either. I’m talking Earth brandy.”
The two soldiers’ mouths dropped open.
“Earth brandy?” the short one said in wonder. “I haven’t ever seen a bottle of it, never mind tasted it.”
Shatz Abel had already maneuvered the two soldiers from their chairs and was steering them out of the bar toward the lift tube.
“Oh, you’ll taste it, all right,” he promised.
The taller soldier stopped dead as they were entering the lift tube and turned to Dalin, who had been trailing behind them.
“Hey, what did the Old Man clip on the little fellow here, eh?”
Shatz Abel, laughing, leaned over and whispered something in the man’s ear; in a moment he was laughing, leaning into his friend to pass along his new information in a whisper.
“No fooling?” the shorter soldier said, guffawing. As the lift tube closed on them, they turned in unison to stare at Dalin, who stood stoically as they laughed at him.
“Imagine that,” the tall one said, and the two of them broke into laughter again.
In less than twenty minutes the two soldiers, removed of their black clothing, identification cards, weapons, and money, lay trussed in the hotel room’s bathroom, back to back in the empty tub, the hotel bill laid neatly nearby, and Dalin and Shatz Abel, this time in reasonably well-fitting garb (though Dalin was having trouble with the shorter soldier’s truncated boot) were on their way with all official speed to Wrath-pei’s ship. They were surprised to find their transport packed with black-clad soldiers; without trouble, they were able to learn that a general recall had been ordered.
“And I hear we’re pulling out within the hour,” a soldier near Shatz Abel and Dalin said to another.
“That means the Old Man must have finished his business here already,” the other said, and there was laughter.
But an hour later they were not on their way to Ganymede. Dalin and his pirate friend—hiding in a supply closet because, in the confusion of quick departure, they could not locate the area where the soldiers they had replaced were stationed—learned to Shatz Abel’s anger and Dalin Shar’s secret elation that they were on their way, with all due speed, to Titan.
Chapter 16
Of all the times that Pynthas Rei dreaded facing the High Leader—and that included every time—the Period of Darkness was by far the worst.
It was not that the High Leader was in a foul mood to begin with during this Period of Darkness—to the contrary, it was, for him, a time of relative peace and contentment. That would soon change, of course, with the news that Pynthas bore. It was, rather, the Period of Darkness itself that gave Pynthas the shivers. The former Prime Cornelian had many odd habits and customs necessary to his station and circumstance; but of all of them, the Period of Bathing (merely repulsive to Pynthas’s eye), the Period of Clinging (during which the High Leader crawled to the ceiling of his chambers and clung there, upside down, like any common house spider—the High Leader claimed it restored precious lubricant to the upper sections of his metallic carapace and the outer reaches of his limbs), and all the others, the Period of Darkness was, to Pynthas, the oddest and most unsettling of all.
There was a separate chamber for the Period of Darkness, and now, as Pynthas Rei stood outside its door, he sought to find any reason at all why he should not enter. For inside…
“Pynthas, is that you? I can see you, you know, you fool.”
Pynthas Rei had, as usual, overlooked an important detail; he now looked up at the tiny lens of the security camera over the door and tried to smile.
“H-h-hello, High L-leader.”
“Come in. And bring the data card you’re clutching with you.”
The High Leader’s languid voice belied the irritation it held.
“Y-yes, H-high—”
The door opened, and, like a mongoose mesmerized by a cobra, Pynthas Rei entered.
The door immediately closed behind him, and Pynthas found himself in total darkness. His hands had become so moist with discomfort that the data card he bore slipped from his fingers to the floor.
“Ohhhhhh,” Pynthas moaned, but the High Leader merely laughed torpidly.
“Find it, you fool.”
Pynthas immediately dropped to all fours, patting at the cold stone floor, but was unable to locate the card.
A long sigh escaped from the High Leader, and Pynthas felt him draw near; in a moment he looked up and gasped to see the High Leader’s two vertically shaped eyes, like cobalt-blue cat’s eyes, glowing not a foot away from his face; back there somewhere he discerned his own reflection, and now he felt the High Leader’s hot, oily breath break over his face.
“Fiiiind iiiiit,” the High Leader said in a languid hiss.
“Yes, High Leader! Immediately!”
“You’re ruining my Period of Darkness, Pynthas,” the High Leader warned, and now Pynthas Rei knew this was true, because the High Leader’s wound-down mechanisms began to hum back to life, bringing the High Leader back up from his level of turpitude to his dangerously explosive self.
“Does thissss… help?” the High Leader screamed, rising back to full working level as the lights in the room burst on, blinding Pynthas and sending him onto his back, holding his hands over his eyes.
When he was able to see again, he gasped anew and nearly fainted—for there, hovering over his face like a metal balloon, was the High Leader’s own visage, eyes burning bright with anger.
The High Leader pulled a thin-fingered front limb in a snapping motion over Pynthas’s face; there, held delicately between two of the High Leader’s metal nails, was the data card Pynthas had dropped.
“Get up,” the High Leader said, moving away from the scrambling toady.
On rising, Pynthas saw that the chamber, when bathed in light as it was now, was no different than any other chamber holding a Screen and no furniture; it had been the darkness, and the High Leader, which had made it fearsome.
The High Leader was pushing the data card into the Screen’s receptacle.
Pynthas, deathly afraid for another reason now, managed to take a tentative step forward and squeak out, “P-perhaps I sh-should explain… ?”
The High Leader turned with a withering glance, and Pynthas immediately froze in place.
“We’ll watch it together,” the High Leader said with annoyance. “I should tell you, Pynthas, that I’m amazed that I made you territorial governor of those infernal regions you abide so well—those…”
“Volcanic regions!” Pynthas said, with a trace of animation. “Arsia Mons, and Tholis Regis, and—”
“Yes, those dead volcanoes. Thank the sky there aren’t any Martian citizens there you could harm. I should also point out that before you barged in on me I was enjoying a rather extraordinary Period of Darkness. In fact, I had been looking forward to it ever since my bargain was struck with Kamath Clan. It really was a most extraordinary piece of luck, you know. For the mere promise that the house of Clan remain united with the house of Kris, thereby fulfilling the silly woman’s lifelong wish that her secular religion be accepted and legitimized on Mars—which it never will be, of course—she has sent Tabrel Kris back to me. In the process she has cut her own throat, of course, and probably that of her idiot son as well. At the same time, she has made sure that Wrath-Pe
i will cut short his acquisition raids on our outer colonies, and also guaranteed that the vermin will be on Titan when we strike.”
The High Leader turned his glowering eyes on Pynthas Rei. “All of this I was enjoying with the utmost languorousness, Pynthas. I cannot describe to you how pleasant thoughts become even more pleasant when they are drawn out to exquisite length. It is one of the decidedly positive aspects of my condition. And now, the message? I do hope it won’t offend my still languorous mood.”
“As I s-said, p-perhaps I should—”
“Screen, begin,” the High Leader said, ignoring the toady’s beseeching.
The Screen was filled with the ravaged, full-length picture of Senator Kris, suspended in his constraining upright field; the field’s faint yellow light made the senator appear slightly jaundiced.
“Did the camera in the garret record this?”
“Yes, High Leader.”
“Why is he smiling?” the High Leader asked.
“Because—” Pynthas began, but he was cut off not by the High Leader this time but by the senator, who began to speak.
“Prime Cor… nelian,” Senator Kris rasped; his mouth was indeed smiling—a very unattractive sight, since his mouth had long since been voided of teeth, which had fallen out one by one over the years due to the intravenous diet he had been subjected to, which kept him just one side of malnutrition.
The senator tried to move; but the tightness of his constriction caused him a pain that he seemed to have long since come to terms with. His face resumed a more passive demeanor, but his lips moved, and he spoke:
“Prime … Corn… elian. I know that… you think… you have… won. But I… must tell you other … wise.”
Exhausted by the effort, the senator seemed to drift off to sleep; the High Leader, impatient, shouted at the Screen, “Move on!”
The Screen froze. “That is not a directive command.”
The High Leader turned and shrieked at Pynthas, “Make it work!”
“Screen, resume,” Pynthas whispered, cowering. Instantly the senator began to speak again on the Screen.
Journey - Book II of the Five Worlds Trilogy Page 11
